Maybe I'm being snooty about the whole thing, but if people put half as much thought into their spelling and grammar as they do into their clothing, they would look half as stupid on the internet and at school or work. It's actually rather surprising, seeing how much of the internet is still text-based interaction, that people haven't made grammar more of a priority.
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| This is my life. |
Actually, I've been thinking about a blog layout change lately, and it's to the point where I'm about to start working on it, despite the fact that I told myself I shouldn't until December, at least. A new year, a new layout, whatever. BUT I CAN'T.
I'm tired of it. Not incredibly so, it's just time for a change. I've been wanting a haircut, too. And I just went online shopping yesterday.
Now that I think of it, maybe I'm just ready for school to begin again. It will be my final year, jam-packed with upper-division English classes and a whole bunch of art classes so I can pull an art minor out of my...
You see, I haven't given much thought to what goes on after college. Up until now, my life has been basically set. From grade school to middle school, middle school to high school, high school to college. I've always known that it would go that way. I didn't know how it would go, but I knew that it would.
And now I'm entering the great unknown. After I graduate there is a huge chasm called "independence", called "adulthood", that I haven't the foggiest how to deal with. Grad school seems especially safe. I know how to do school.
My life plan in middle school and high school was vague. I would go to college and pen Nobel-winning novels and never have to sit a 9-5 job in my life. I could write for a living, and eventually get married and make babies and have a cute house with a white picket fence. I'd also pick up French somewhere along the way, live somewhere fashionable like New York, London, or Paris, probably design all of my own clothes and become something of a living legend. That was the plan.
| Just like this boy. |
Writing a book is really hard, especially if you're the type of person who's used to coasting on the fumes of existence. Just five years ago, I was that silent, sullen girl who was coasting on the fumes of C and D grades in high school. Yes, I've also gotten an F (just for a marking period). My only saving grace was honors English class, and it was really something of a miracle that I managed to stay in those. I've worked hard since then to forget those days, but I'm still learning how to fully engage in school and long-term projects, like writing a novel, without getting bored and burning out. It's really been a test of my willpower to try and write this summer, even when I have absolutely nothing going on. And I love writing, if you couldn't tell.
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| Even when I'm coming up on a marathon 6 hours of writing. |
So far, I'm 0 for 2. I don't know French, I haven't written a best-selling book, let alone any book. I'm not living in a glamorous city. A quarter of the year I'm wasting in suburban New Jersey, wearing the same shorts and t-shirt day after day, eating the same bowl of Lucky Charms or Apple Cinnamon Cheerios morning after morning. I only dress myself for dentist appointments or a trip to Target.
The other three quarters of the year I'm in small-town Virginia, trying hard to prove that I'm smart and can keep up in school while getting four hours of sleep a night.
I'm not making my own clothes, although I can work a sewing machine in a very basic way. I'm not wearing Burberry and Louis Vuitton. If I could name my style, it would be college chic. Meaning, I probably bought it at Goodwill or on Ebay for $5 and lucky for me, frumpy mothball vintage is back in style.
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| Fake glasses, Goodwill blazer, Mum's old scarf. FTW. |
I am not at all who I projected I would be by age 20, almost 21. I don't have a classy, hilarious British boyfriend. I don't see white picket fences in my near-future. I don't have a 5-year plan for anything.
Still, I like who I am, and I've needed all of this failure and these failed expectations to become the person I am today. I'm not the girl who can speak French like a Française, but I'm the girl who has learned to love my own language and how I can use it. I haven't written a book but every time I try, I get closer, and I learn more about myself in the process. I'm not a style icon but I'm finding my own style. I haven't gotten a nose job or boob job or a full-body transplant like I've thought about before, but I'm getting to the point where I don't care.
I will never be "sexy" or "hot", and I'm really, really okay with that. You should never, ever want to be in anybody's skin but your own. Disconnect from what the world is telling you for a minute. Why do they have so much sway in how you shape your body? They are not you. They have no right to tell you how to change your body. Don't buy it. You are the one living in your body. Take care of it and love it, don't just spend your time trying to hide the things about you that aren't fashionable (or, as some people might say: ugly). I don't believe in ugly. I believe in healthy and unhealthy, symmetrical and asymmetrical, but I don't believe in ugly. You are unique. In a world full of billions of people, nobody looks exactly like you. Even identical twins earn different scars.
Yes, I said earn. You earn your scars by living your life, not by trying to preserve yourself for... For what? Photographs? Because guess what, we all become crazy, wrinkly old biddies in the end. Enjoy your youth, but enjoy the gray hairs and the wrinkles and the scars that come as you age and learn and grow. Earn them!
I guess the moral of this story is that adults don't know half as much as we thought they did as kids. They're making it up as they go along, just like the rest of us. And what they do know, they know from experience, from falling down and getting up and failing at things. I guess I could say "we", because I'm almost an independent adult along with the rest of them.
Have a daingerous day today. Learn some things. Realize how lucky you are to have the things and the people that you do. Chin up, Charlie! You're gonna be a star.
Grammar isn't not important
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